[msabalau]

Pragmatically, the statement was made famous in English by a conservative US president, addressing the nation, including his supporters, who trusted him, but not the Soviets with whom he was negotiating.

Saying, in effect: "you trust in me, I'm choosing to trust that it makes sense to make agreement with the USSR, and we are going to verify it, just as we would with any serious business, as is proverbially commonsensical" is a perfectly intelligible.

There is nothing cunning about clinging to a single, superficial, context free reading of language.

Human speech and writting is not code, ambiguity and containing a range of possible meanings is part of its power and value.

[stavros]

So "trust me, but verify others"? Where have you seen this adage used in this sense? It's not even used like that in the original Russian, where Reagan lifted it from.

[AmericanChopper]

I think that’s a rather peculiar interpretation. I always thought it was pretty obvious that Reagan was just saying that he didn’t trust the soviets, and found a polite excuse not to in the form of the Russian proverb.